WA's Strategic Marine takes on the world
WA's Strategic Marine has grown to be an international ship builder, with a current order book of more than US$250m.
'Operations in Vietnam are servicing great demand in that region.'
Jeni
Bone
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Strategic Marine in WA has come a long way from back yard boat builders. The company started off in Geraldton in 1984, with one of its directors, Mark Newbold, having a cray fishing background and deciding to build his own boat.
Since 2000, Strategic Marine has become one of the leading manufacturers of high speed aluminium ships in Australia and to date has designed and built more than 350 vessels, with a current order book of more than US$250m.
The company has built boats for fishing companies, military and para-military, police, patrol boats, the Singapore Police Coast Guard, Malaysian Royal Police, Tasmanian and other police forces around the country.
According to marketing manager, Jamie Anderson, the company has cut back on its range of products and services - preferring to focus their efforts providing shipbuilding technologies to the offshore and patrol vessel markets - over the past two years, Strategic Marine has added two shipyard to its operations and has been set with the challenge of evolving into a large global shipbuilding organization.
"We have taken a more global approach. The offshore market is experiencing a huge boom, especially in the ship building industry. Demand far out ways supply and we have a great opportunity to capitalize on these market trends.
'We used to provide a larger selection of maritime services in the past, diversification into maritime service was a way for us not to throw all of our eggs into the volatile shipbuilding basket.
'But it's harder to manage such a large portfolio of services when our bread butter is shipbuilding. We have taken on more of a specialized mind set, focusing on our dream of becoming a world leading shipbuilding company."
Strategic Marine's expansion is not limited to product range, these have also taken the proactive approach and developed three offshore shipyards in Singapore, Vietnam and Mexico.
As Andersen explains: "We are receiving plenty of enquiries from ship operators throughout Asia and the Middle East, however a shift in demand has been experienced due to the development of our Vietnam shipyard which is capable of constructing much larger steel vessels. This has resulted in a lot interest from large European ship operators."
In the past 18 months, Strategic Marine has had its emphasis on steel ship building.
"Three of the largest single build vessels include two 143m vessels which will be used as dive support vessels for a Singapore client. The other is the 99m floating dry dock in Henderson, south of Fremantle for the WA government, which will be used for navy submarine maintenance work.
"Our growth has doubled each year for the past two years. We have about 1500 staff over all locations, from directors to apprentices, painters and contractors."
The company's new markets are the prime focus. "We are concentrating on Vietnam and Mexico," says Anderson, adding that the company has a contract for two 52m crew boats for carrying cargo and crew for the oil and gas industry.
"There's a lot of demand in the Gulf of Mexico and it would be a nice market to crack."
More at www.strategicmarine.com
by Jeni Bone 
Port Macquarie, NSW
